Killer Countdown. Amelia Autin
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He wasn’t even going to share the news with his aides, although he’d have to think of something plausible to tell them. Not that he would outright lie, but he didn’t want to put any of them in the position of having to prevaricate with the press, should they discover he’d been here in the hospital and besiege them with questions.
If any reporter asked him, he’d stonewall because it wasn’t anyone’s business but his own—unless and until he decided to run for reelection—and he didn’t want people looking at him differently. Didn’t want people making excuses for him or feeling sorry for him. The doctors had assured him the seizures could be controlled with medication, so there was no way it could impact his job—it hadn’t so far and that’s the way it would stay. He didn’t feel any different, and he certainly wasn’t planning to lower his expectations of himself as a result of this diagnosis.
In fact, the only change in his life was the damned twice-daily medication.
* * *
Investigative television reporter Carly Edwards stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor of the Mayo Clinic’s main building, turned left, and confidently strode toward the neurology wing—5 West—as if she knew where she was going. She didn’t. The hospital would say she had no business here, and in a way that was true. She wasn’t a patient’s relative. She wasn’t visiting a loved one. But she did have business here. A source had told her Colorado’s junior senator was here—Senator Shane Jones—somewhere on the fifth floor. And Carly was going to track him down if she could, get an exclusive interview, and be the first to break the story. Whatever the story was.
She saw the attendant at the outer desk, with a sign that read Desk 5 West. Before anyone could challenge her, she turned right, again as if she knew where she was going, into a corridor marked 5 West Pod A. The patient rooms—all private rooms, she knew, from the research she’d done—were arranged around the nurses’ station and the various rooms behind it in a square. Some of the doors to the rooms were open, but some were closed. And Carly cursed internally when she realized the patients weren’t listed outside the doors—not even their last names—the way they were in some hospitals. Which meant she had no idea if Senator Jones was in any of these twelve rooms. Had no idea if he was even in Pod A.
“May I help you?” the nurse on duty behind the desk politely asked Carly.
“I’m looking for...” She quickly amended Senator to Shane and finished, “... Shane Jones.”
“That patient specified no visitors except those on a very short list—and all those names are male. Are you a relative?” the nurse asked pointedly.
Busted, Carly thought. She smiled her best smile. “Not exactly.”
“If you’re not a relative and you’re not on the list, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
The nurse’s hand went to the phone, and Carly knew the other woman wouldn’t hesitate to call Security to escort her out, if necessary. But Carly wasn’t about to get this close to her prey and give up meekly. She hadn’t gotten where she was in her career by being faint of heart. She glanced down at the prop she’d donned before she came here—the diamond engagement ring Jack had given her over eight years ago. She tossed her long, dark hair over her shoulder, suppressed the brief memory of Jack and the expression on his face when he’d placed it on her finger, and smiled brightly. “He didn’t want me to visit him in the hospital. That’s probably why my name’s not on the list. But I wanted to surprise him.”
“You’re Senator Jones’s fiancée?” the nurse asked.
Not willing to out-and-out lie, even for an exclusive, Carly didn’t confirm or deny, just beamed at the nurse and let her smile work its magic. That smile had gotten her into—and out of—more dangerous places she had no business being than the Mayo Clinic.
The nurse stood up and started out from behind the desk. “Let me see if he wants to see you.”
Uh-oh, Carly thought. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” she demurred.
“Yes, but sometimes the patient is sleeping or just isn’t in the mood for visitors.” She smiled at Carly, inviting her to understand. “Since you’re not on the list, maybe he didn’t want you to visit for a reason—because of the way he looks with all the electrodes attached. You know how vain men are. Especially a man as handsome as the senator.”
Carly’s ears perked up when the nurse mentioned electrodes. Electroshock therapy, she quickly hypothesized. Now that would be an exclusive, indeed. Colorado’s hero senator—a former United States marine—needing electroshock therapy for a mental illness. She suppressed the little nudge her conscience gave her that people were entitled to their privacy and reminded herself that Senator Jones was a public figure. If he were mentally ill, that could impact his job performance, and his constituents had a right to know about it. His constituents and the entire country.
“Hang on,” the nurse said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
Carly watched as the nurse walked into 5W-10, making a mental note of the senator’s room number, then turned to make a run for it. She wasn’t Senator Jones’s fiancée—he didn’t have one, as far as she knew—and when he told the nurse he wasn’t engaged, the nurse would probably call Security. Carly would need to do some fancy explaining—if they caught her.
She was already heading down the corridor, nearly past the outer desk, when the nurse called her back. “Miss? Miss? You can see him now.”
Carly hesitated. Was this some kind of trick? Maybe the senator had asked the nurse to bring her back to his room, but to call Security so she could be arrested for trespassing. Either that or the senator was so mentally out of it he actually imagined he had a fiancée? If that was the case, could she snow him into thinking she was? Again her conscience gave her a nudge—harder this time. But that didn’t stop her feet from turning around and heading back toward room 5W-10.
Carly put her hand on the door latch, then pushed. The door swung open noiselessly, and she entered the room. And caught her breath as a set of stern brown eyes zeroed in on her face. She knew what he looked like—of course she knew. Handsome as sin, with a face carved in granite, and chocolate-brown eyes that could be warm as fudge or cold as a frozen Eskimo Pie...which they were now. Six-foot-two with broad shoulders tapering to a waist and hips that hadn’t an ounce of flab anywhere. Long, long legs—of course, you idiot, he’s six-two!—that seemed to dwarf the hospital bed on which he lay in a semireclining position.
The mesh cap covering his head—and the electrodes she could see attached to his skull beneath it—should have made him look ridiculous, but somehow they didn’t. Not when his bare, muscular legs, clad only in a pair of running shorts, were right beneath her eyes—legs that were perfectly visible because the sheet that might have been covering them had been restlessly tossed to one side. Not when his impressively muscled chest, covered only by a short-sleeved button-down shirt, rose and fell with his steady breathing, drawing her attention there. She didn’t know why he wasn’t clad in traditional hospital garb, but he wasn’t, and she couldn’t help the way her gaze was riveted on his impressive physical attributes. Then the legs, the chest and the rest of his perfect body faded into obscurity as her eyes met his again, and she floundered helplessly beneath those dark orbs.
“Do you know who I am?” Carly blurted out, then felt foolish.
The gravelly voice she recognized from hearing him on the Senate floor giving impassioned speeches spoke. “Oh yeah. You’re my fiancée. I didn’t quite catch the name, but...” He looked her over from head to toe...twice. His eyes lingered—obviously—on her breasts. Both times. “I have good taste.”
It was crazy. Stupid. She wasn’t the kind to get flustered by a man. Any man. Even one as blatantly masculine, sexy and irresistible as the senator was. Carly didn’t have a shy bone in her body, unlike her younger sister, Tahra. But...she blushed under his pointed stare. The kind of thing Tahra did a lot, but Carly never did. Until now.
She resisted the urge to cross her arms across her chest,